Mark It Up! PDF Annotation Software

Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) has turned out to be a big winner when it comes to broad adoption across the web for a variety of uses. From print-ready files to full-color ebooks, PDFs are the lingua franca of the internet.

In book publishing, the first time we generate a PDF of a book is the first proof after the layout is complete. The proof goes out to a proofreader for checking, and often the author reads a copy as well.

Then the inevitable question comes up of how to make corrections, and how to transmit the corrections back to the book designer to be fixed in the book files.

Some people prefer to work on a print out of the page proof. This has to be mailed (or faxed if there aren’t too many changes) when finished, and that’s the way we’ve been doing it for years.

But it’s much more efficient to simply mark up the PDF itself and send a copy back as an email attachment.

The problem is, most people don’t own software that will annotate PDFs, that is, allow you to make notes or otherwise mark them up.

If you own Adobe’s Creative Suite, you’ll have a copy of Acrobat or Acrobat Pro. These are the premier tools for working with PDFs, and there are robust annotation tools available within the programs.

But what about everyone else? I went on a hunt on behalf of my clients, and here are some of the programs I found. If you know of others, please share them in the comments.

PDF Annotation for Windows

Note that these programs don’t edit the PDF files, but add objects to them. These objects, including notes and drawing objects, can then be read by other PDF-reading applications.

Foxit Reader“Foxit PDF Reader is a small, fast, and feature rich PDF viewer for Microsoft Windows, which allows you to open, view, and print any PDF file.” And it’s a free download.

PDF-XChange Viewer“The PDF-XChange Viewer is smaller, faster and more feature rich than any other FREE PDF Reader/Viewer/Editor available.” Also a free download, with a sample of upgradeable features.

PDF Annotation on the Mac

If you own a Macintosh with System X, you already own a basic annotation tool: Preview. This utility, which comes with the system, is a display platform for many kinds of graphic files. But if you load a PDF file and go to Tools / Annotate you’ll see you can add notes, drawing objects, links and other objects to the file. They will be readable in Acrobat, too.

The Future

PDF looks like a format that will be with us for some time. It makes sense to get used to dealing with these files. Being able to mark up a 300-page book and send it with the speed of email is a great advance, in my opinion.

I’ve spent too much time and money shipping paper all over the country. Get one of these free annotation programs and spend a few minutes learning how to use it. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Let me know your experience with these programs, or if there are any good ones that should be included.

Joel Friedlander is a self-published author, an award-winning book designer, and an accomplished blogger. He's the founder of the Self-Publishing Roadmap online training course, and a frequent speaker at industry events where he talks to writers about how the new tools of publishing can help them reach and inspire their readers.

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I am a student, and all our lectures are put up online for us. I have a friend with an iPad and he has this app which allows him to make addition notes highlight etc. I would like that for my windows. I have no idea which of the ones listed are the best. Could anyone shed any light?

I’m looking for something where, as the lecturer is talking about his work which are all on the PDF i can make additional notes.

Joel, I’ve been so focused on writing my manuscripts and hunting down a lit agent that I haven’t given thought to all that goes into correcting proofs and streamlining that process. Once again your tips are invaluable! Thank you!

Thanks your sharing.
For some reasons, I work on three platforms (and use Dropbox to sync files), each has its PDF annotation software: Skim on Mac, GoodReader on IPad, and PDF Xchange on Windows.
The problem is, their annotations seem to be incompatible more or less. The annotations added by PDF XChange is not exactly the same view in GoodReader, and the annotations added by Skim are not even exist in GoodReader and PDF-XChange. Any idea?

Thanks again, Joel.
I tested Foxitreader, PDF Xchange, and Adobe Reader X, and found out that those PDF files with the word SECURE on the very top of the wondow following “.pdf” do not allow me to do the highlighting or comment-adding.
I have not tried the HIGHLIGHTER, for I could not install it. When I tried to install HIGHLIGHTER I followed the demo-video. The demo-video showed the PLUGINS but I could not find this PLUGINS-screen even after I had logged in my WP dashboard. So I cannot install the HIGHLIGHTER.

Theo, you may be dealing with a protected file that cannot be edited. You might be able to work on the file in Acrobat Pro, but if it is DRM-sealed, it is not meant to be copied or modified, and none of these software programs will work.

farhaan, I don’t know about PC but Mac comes with Preview, which has basic annotation tools built into it. Also see Ann Marie’s comment farther up, where she points out that Adobe Reader, a free download, also comes with annotation tools and is available for both the Mac and Windows.

Thanks Joel. I’m probably one of the reasons you were looking for a better solution to marking up the hard copy! But really, I’ve been meaning to look into PDF-editing software, so this is a good start.
Thank you also, Ann-Marie. I have Reader X and have been wondering how to use the editing portion. I’ll take a look at this tutorial. So thank you for posting!

The free Adobe Reader X, avail for Mac and Windows, lets the user add comments to *any* PDF, and save it. The only comment tools available out of the box are the sticky note and the highlighter, but for many people, that’s more than enough. (To get access to the full boat of commenting tools, the Acrobat user needs to save a copy of the PDF with Reader rights enabled, as mentioned previously.)

Another one is our site – http://a.nnotate.com – which lets you annotate pdfs in the browser. As it’s web based, you can have several people annotating and discussing the same copy online, which can reduce the number of editing cycles needed.

Hello, Joel.
If you are creating PDFs from Acrobat Pro, you can enable commenting to your PDFs. (We’re using Acrobat Pro v. 7 for Mac. I’m assuming this feature is still available.) Enabling commenting allows anyone running a current copy of Acrobat Reader (free) to use a small set of markup tools. The marked up PDF file can be printed or saved to the PDF. Anyone with Acrobat reader can view and print the comments.

The tools take a little time to figure out. I skip the comment balloons and use text boxes, the pencil tool, the line tool, and the arrow tool, as well as stamps to mark time completed. (It’s not as quick as pen to paper…but if you’re reading a lot of small type it is a lot easier on the eyes.)

If you want to print your corrections, make sure to select “Document and Markups” from the Comments and Forms menu in the print dialogue box. Under page scaling, select “shrink to printable area” to ensure your corrections aren’t clipped at the printer’s margins.

By the way, if you do much proofreading using PDFs, I’d suggest using a dual monitor setup. I use a 23″ display as my primary monitor and a 20″ as a secondary monitor.

I’m assuming you have a screen large enough to display the marked up PDF and your ID document side-by-side. I work on a 17″ MacBookPro so when clients send me marked-up PDFs via email, I have to print them out. Luckily, this is usually 2nd and 3rd proof stages; we’ve already dealt with 1st proof the old-fashioned way.

Maggie, I work on a 24″ iMac so I could put them up next to each other, but for some reason never do that. Instead, I hot-key back and forth between Acrobat and ID and find it quite fast that way. I know a lot of people work on laptops but I’ve never even tried to do a book that way, so kudos to you.

Walt, I know of no task less appealing than looking up those page, paragraph and line citations just to find the comma or typo that needs fixing. How much faster, easier and more efficient it is to have a mark-up—either on paper or on screen—-to locate and identify the corrections that need to be made. That’s my hidden agenda behind trying to find free and low-cost solutions for my clients.

Jeez, Joel! I needed this last week. I did a search and found some appallingly bad free PDF editors that introduced more errors than I was annotating! In the end, I printed it, marked it up by hand, and posted it. Ah well, better late than never, eh? I’ll have a look at the ones you suggest and maybe next time proofing won’t be so very tedious.